Font snob

I'm deep in the land of graphic design this week, working on a newsletter for the Friends of Montezuma Wetlands folks.  Files and articles have been coming in madly all weekends, and I've been sorting them out into a hopefully attractive and informative format.  It has been enjoyable, haven't had a good solid design project in a while.  The looming deadline (publish or perish by Friday) is keeping me going too.

So I've been making choices about heading fonts and paragraph styles and colors palettes, which makes me reflect on how passionate people are about fonts.  No exception here, I get downright surly when clients request fonts which make me itch.  Font choice is important, it communicates a lot beyond the words the letters are spelling out.  Casual, formal, calligraphic, too trendy, too dated...and often the "trendy" quickly turns into the "dated"...

I'm a little snobby about fonts, I admit.  Don't like fonts that are too dense, or too overused.  I avoid Apple Chancery (have you ever tried to read a paragraph written in this font?), Comic Sans, and Tekton.  I once received an email written entirely in Comic Sans, and it did not bode well for that line of communication.  Papyrus used to be a favorite, but everyone and their aunt Jane uses it now.  Ditto on Tempus Sans.  

Right now I tend towards using nice interesting-yet-readable fonts for paragraphs, fond of Futura or Gill Sans for sans serif, or Georgia and Garamond for serif.  Skia is nice, so is Bernhard Modern.  I like space around my letters.  Headline fonts: Zapfino (but it will probably go the way of Papyrus in a year or so) and Herculanum and something odd I found online called Old Copperfield.